Jude the Obscure Page 5

  IV

  Walking somewhat slowly by reason of his concentration, the boy--anancient man in some phases of thought, much younger than his yearsin others--was overtaken by a light-footed pedestrian, whom,notwithstanding the gloom, he could perceive to be wearing anextraordinarily tall hat, a swallow-tailed coat, and a watch-chainthat danced madly and threw around scintillations of sky-light asits owner swung along upon a pair of thin legs and noiseless boots.Jude, beginning to feel lonely, endeavoured to keep up with him.

  "Well, my man! I'm in a hurry, so you'll have to walk pretty fastif you keep alongside of me. Do you know who I am?"

  "Yes, I think. Physician Vilbert?"

  "Ah--I'm known everywhere, I see! That comes of being a publicbenefactor."

  Vilbert was an itinerant quack-doctor, well known to the rusticpopulation, and absolutely unknown to anybody else, as he, indeed,took care to be, to avoid inconvenient investigations. Cottagersformed his only patients, and his Wessex-wide repute was among themalone. His position was humbler and his field more obscure thanthose of the quacks with capital and an organized system ofadvertising. He was, in fact, a survival. The distances hetraversed on foot were enormous, and extended nearly the whole lengthand breadth of Wessex. Jude had one day seen him selling a pot ofcoloured lard to an old woman as a certain cure for a bad leg, thewoman arranging to pay a guinea, in instalments of a shilling afortnight, for the precious salve, which, according to the physician,could only be obtained from a particular animal which grazed onMount Sinai, and was to be captured only at great risk to life andlimb. Jude, though he already had his doubts about this gentleman'smedicines, felt him to be unquestionably a travelled personage, andone who might be a trustworthy source of information on matters notstrictly professional.

  "I s'pose you've been to Christminster, Physician?"

  "I have--many times," replied the long thin man. "That's one of mycentres."

  "It's a wonderful city for scholarship and religion?"

  "You'd say so, my boy, if you'd seen it. Why, the very sons of theold women who do the washing of the colleges can talk in Latin--notgood Latin, that I admit, as a critic: dog-Latin--cat-Latin, as weused to call it in my undergraduate days."

  "And Greek?"

  "Well--that's more for the men who are in training for bishops, thatthey may be able to read the New Testament in the original."

  "I want to learn Latin and Greek myself."

  "A lofty desire. You must get a grammar of each tongue."

  "I mean to go to Christminster some day."

  "Whenever you do, you say that Physician Vilbert is the onlyproprietor of those celebrated pills that infallibly cure alldisorders of the alimentary system, as well as asthma and shortnessof breath. Two and threepence a box--specially licensed by thegovernment stamp."

  "Can you get me the grammars if I promise to say it hereabout?"

  "I'll sell you mine with pleasure--those I used as a student."

  "Oh, thank you, sir!" said Jude gratefully, but in gasps, for theamazing speed of the physician's walk kept him in a dog-trot whichwas giving him a stitch in the side.

  "I think you'd better drop behind, my young man. Now I'll tell youwhat I'll do. I'll get you the grammars, and give you a firstlesson, if you'll remember, at every house in the village, torecommend Physician Vilbert's golden ointment, life-drops, and femalepills."

  "Where will you be with the grammars?"

  "I shall be passing here this day fortnight at precisely this hour offive-and-twenty minutes past seven. My movements are as truly timedas those of the planets in their courses."

  "Here I'll be to meet you," said Jude.

  "With orders for my medicines?"

  "Yes, Physician."

  Jude then dropped behind, waited a few minutes to recover breath,and went home with a consciousness of having struck a blow forChristminster.

  Through the intervening fortnight he ran about and smiled outwardlyat his inward thoughts, as if they were people meeting and nodding tohim--smiled with that singularly beautiful irradiation which is seento spread on young faces at the inception of some glorious idea, asif a supernatural lamp were held inside their transparent natures,giving rise to the flattering fancy that heaven lies about them then.

  He honestly performed his promise to the man of many cures, in whomhe now sincerely believed, walking miles hither and thither amongthe surrounding hamlets as the Physician's agent in advance. On theevening appointed he stood motionless on the plateau, at the placewhere he had parted from Vilbert, and there awaited his approach.The road-physician was fairly up to time; but, to the surprise ofJude on striking into his pace, which the pedestrian did not diminishby a single unit of force, the latter seemed hardly to recognize hisyoung companion, though with the lapse of the fortnight the eveningshad grown light. Jude thought it might perhaps be owing to hiswearing another hat, and he saluted the physician with dignity.

  "Well, my boy?" said the latter abstractedly.

  "I've come," said Jude.

  "You? who are you? Oh yes--to be sure! Got any orders, lad?"

  "Yes." And Jude told him the names and addresses of the cottagerswho were willing to test the virtues of the world-renowned pills andsalve. The quack mentally registered these with great care.

  "And the Latin and Greek grammars?" Jude's voice trembled withanxiety.

  "What about them?"

  "You were to bring me yours, that you used before you took yourdegree."

  "Ah, yes, yes! Forgot all about it--all! So many lives depending onmy attention, you see, my man, that I can't give so much thought as Iwould like to other things."

  Jude controlled himself sufficiently long to make sure of the truth;and he repeated, in a voice of dry misery, "You haven't brought 'em!"

  "No. But you must get me some more orders from sick people, and I'llbring the grammars next time."

  Jude dropped behind. He was an unsophisticated boy, but the gift ofsudden insight which is sometimes vouchsafed to children showed himall at once what shoddy humanity the quack was made of. There was tobe no intellectual light from this source. The leaves dropped fromhis imaginary crown of laurel; he turned to a gate, leant against it,and cried bitterly.

  The disappointment was followed by an interval of blankness. Hemight, perhaps, have obtained grammars from Alfredston, but to dothat required money, and a knowledge of what books to order; andthough physically comfortable, he was in such absolute dependence asto be without a farthing of his own.

  At this date Mr. Phillotson sent for his pianoforte, and it gave Judea lead. Why should he not write to the schoolmaster, and ask him tobe so kind as to get him the grammars in Christminster? He mightslip a letter inside the case of the instrument, and it would besure to reach the desired eyes. Why not ask him to send any oldsecond-hand copies, which would have the charm of being mellowed bythe university atmosphere?

  To tell his aunt of his intention would be to defeat it. It wasnecessary to act alone.

  After a further consideration of a few days he did act, and on theday of the piano's departure, which happened to be his next birthday,clandestinely placed the letter inside the packing-case, directed tohis much-admired friend, being afraid to reveal the operation to hisaunt Drusilla, lest she should discover his motive, and compel him toabandon his scheme.

  The piano was despatched, and Jude waited days and weeks, callingevery morning at the cottage post office before his great-aunt wasstirring. At last a packet did indeed arrive at the village, and hesaw from the ends of it that it contained two thin books. He took itaway into a lonely place, and sat down on a felled elm to open it.

  Ever since his first ecstasy or vision of Christminster and itspossibilities, Jude had meditated much and curiously on the probablesort of process that was involved in turning the expressions of onelanguage into those of another. He concluded that a grammar of therequired tongue would contain, primarily, a rule, prescription, orclue of the nature of a secret cipher, which
, once known, wouldenable him, by merely applying it, to change at will all words of hisown speech into those of the foreign one. His childish idea was, infact, a pushing to the extremity of mathematical precision what iseverywhere known as Grimm's Law--an aggrandizement of rough rules toideal completeness. Thus he assumed that the words of the requiredlanguage were always to be found somewhere latent in the words of thegiven language by those who had the art to uncover them, such artbeing furnished by the books aforesaid.

  When, therefore, having noted that the packet bore the postmark ofChristminster, he cut the string, opened the volumes, and turned tothe Latin grammar, which chanced to come uppermost, he could scarcelybelieve his eyes.

  The book was an old one--thirty years old, soiled, scribbledwantonly over with a strange name in every variety of enmity to theletterpress, and marked at random with dates twenty years earlierthan his own day. But this was not the cause of Jude's amazement.He learnt for the first time that there was no law of transmutation,as in his innocence he had supposed (there was, in some degree, butthe grammarian did not recognize it), but that every word in bothLatin and Greek was to be individually committed to memory at thecost of years of plodding.

  Jude flung down the books, lay backward along the broad trunk of theelm, and was an utterly miserable boy for the space of a quarter ofan hour. As he had often done before, he pulled his hat over hisface and watched the sun peering insidiously at him through theinterstices of the straw. This was Latin and Greek, then, was itthis grand delusion! The charm he had supposed in store for him wasreally a labour like that of Israel in Egypt.

  What brains they must have in Christminster and the great schools, hepresently thought, to learn words one by one up to tens of thousands!There were no brains in his head equal to this business; and as thelittle sun-rays continued to stream in through his hat at him, hewished he had never seen a book, that he might never see another,that he had never been born.

  Somebody might have come along that way who would have asked him histrouble, and might have cheered him by saying that his notions werefurther advanced than those of his grammarian. But nobody did come,because nobody does; and under the crushing recognition of hisgigantic error Jude continued to wish himself out of the world.